


Shelter

by kalypsobean



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:44:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9711935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: Aragorn and Legolas in Minas Tirith.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monkiainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkiainen/gifts).



Legolas doesn’t seem to fit in the White City. It’s strange, somehow, because it wasn’t like that in Rohan, though there the buildings were still crafted from wood and one didn’t even need to leave them to feel connected to the earth.

Here, the White Tree is dead, and in a city so cold, filled with grief, the lack of life feels oppressive. Even for Aragorn, whose ancestral blood survives as monuments to that same death that hangs in the air, who has been here before and knows each stone to see how they have worn down and faded over time. He feels, often, as if he can’t breathe, as if the very air carries the scent of death and of imminent destruction. That very weight holds him down, though; it grounds him when he wonders what he’s doing here, though he has claimed too much and lost much more, too much to ever return from. 

For Legolas, it seems different; he doesn’t talk about it, and Aragorn wonders if he would notice were he like other men - he does not know if he would he see Legolas as an ethereal miracle, light and agile in ways that are thoroughly inhuman, or would he be afraid of one so different, and shy away from him. The latter is something Aragorn had never considered; he is used to Elves, and he has always, until now, blended in where he can. That the same wary treatment he accepted as a Ranger, as the price for his freedom of movement, would fall on Legolas, as an outsider here, and that he was the only reason Legolas stayed within the city...

In Rohan, Legolas had doubted, and Aragorn now understands why, more keenly than perhaps he could have, or wants to. Legolas had reason for his actions, that his discomfort, even when the mass of Men was mitigated by the sad familiarity of an imbalanced war, and Aragorn had not seen it. It is not their way to dredge up past faults and reopen those wounds to heal them better; but Aragorn wishes that he could. 

 

Despite the ever-pressing malevolence of Mordor, Aragorn finds himself with nothing to do more often than not and much more frequently than he’d like. He does not like the role of general, of leader; if he asks for a door to be reinforced, it is done before he can reach the bottom level and batten it with his own hands, and for all he knows it’s done he doesn’t instinctively know that he can rely on the result. He used to wander, but he too was unable to move freely, his anonymity lost to offers of flowers and bread and pleas for protection, deliverance. Legolas, on the other hand, is unencumbered by way of his otherness; he is only approached by children, only for their mothers to snatch them away. It is from Legolas, then, that he knows the status of the ramparts, the mood of the sentries, the availability of wood and stone for fortifications, the progress of repairs. 

It does not quite still his mind, though he knows, somehow, that if Legolas says it is done, he can trust it; the distance he feels from his own people is one he can never cross, though he now lives among them and has a place in their world. It isn’t his world, not yet, may never be; that, too, is out of his hands, but Legolas cannot bring him word of it, and even Gandalf has no words in which to disguise a message of comfort.

There are too many unknowns for him to not have certainty over the things he can see for himself, or those he can’t but knows he should.

 

Legolas is already ephemeral, a ghost of some more majestic past, preferring to run on the walls than pass through the gates, though the need for passwords and divides in the city has been all but obliterated by the necessities of being a shelter, a fortress, a bulwark, an arrowhead. He takes his otherness and uses it to be invisible; the thing Aragorn most longs to be, where he could have his hands on the walls and learn where they are weakened from how they feel, how they echo. In that, though Aragorn would expect Legolas takes pride in it - in asserting his freedom, not as an example of how things could be but as taking what he needs from the jaws of the enemy - he feels he is holding Legolas back; that Legolas, as his eyes and ears and hands and feet, as an advisor, the only one with no lingering attachment to the city or its foundations, exists here as an extension of himself, of the crown he has but doesn’t feel he’s yet earned. He can’t shake the feeling that in holding Legolas to his oaths - the one to join the Fellowship, the one to serve until Aragorn’s blood no longer flows but lies dormant, as one with the kings of old - he has made Legolas the very shadow he is. 

“You’re thinking too much,” Legolas says, and truly, Aragorn had not heard his footsteps, light though they are, nor felt the arms around his waist, or the weight from behind. He had always been aware of where Legolas was; his fëa always a presence in his mind, reassuring and somehow warm, but he does not feel it now, even with Legolas there. 

He would apologise, but Legolas doesn’t let him. His silence, the way his chin rests on Aragorn’s shoulder, the way his hair brushes on Aragorn’s hands as he puts them over the hands Legolas has clasped at his waist - they say more than his words would. It feels, for a moment, that Legolas somehow draws strength from him; it isn’t a depletion, but a feeling of more, as if he has unlimited grace and the ability to soar. 

“Do not worry for me, Aragorn,” Legolas says, eventually. They have watched the sun disappear, what little of it there was showing through black smoke and the haze of debris that still floats in the air. Aragorn does not recall it, only that it is darker, and the air is cool as it rushes in, bringing another layer of dust to coat the sill and cling to his skin. “We do what we must, now, so that we may do as we will, when the enemy no longer haunts our step.”

“I didn’t ask you to sacrifice yourself for me,” Aragorn says. Legolas will never go home; that was his promise. He will not run along the branches of the Greenwood or drink in his father’s caves, and for that, he is reduced, the only Elf in a city of men, awed and reviled and feared, with only outsiders for friends. Aragorn has never had a home to know what the loss would be like; he was always aware that he was destined to wander, free from attachments if he chose, and able to leave on only the thought of doing so. Legolas is fading without his; he has been away from it and the succour it gave him for too long, and Aragorn knows it is because of him.

“I have not,” Legolas says. “If I am hidden from your sight, it is only because the enemy is close. Their shadows darken the people’s hearts and hide the light from us. That is why we stand against him, is it not?” Yet Aragorn cannot feel Legolas the way he used to, though he knows he should; he should feel more than Legolas’ hands on him, and Legolas’ lips on his skin should feel warmer, should make him feel warmer, safe.

“Do not fear for me,” Legolas says. “The Sea will not take me from your side, and there is life yet in Minas Tirith, if you choose to see it.” He silences Aragorn’s reply with a kiss, deftly stepping around so that Aragorn can see his face before it happens. There’s only candlelight, and he cannot see the things he knows are there - the grief lying deep under a facade of impassive distance, the resolve that must hold it down; he sees Legolas as a warm glow as if, for a moment, his light is no longer suppressed.

“The stars bless you,” Legolas says. “Do not forget we are never alone.”

As if it was a warning, there is a knock on the door. Legolas steps away, and it is as if he disappeared. 

“It is Mithrandir,” he says. “The news is good.” Then, he is gone, with only the promise implied by the remembrance of his touch to say he was ever there.


End file.
